Speculations
by Selvanic
Summary: Cross-posted from a post on a LiveJournal community. When you can't die, it's fun to speculate on ways you could. Rated for violent imagery.


Heine heard a _lot _of complaints about his being 'invincible'. Admittedly, most of them came from his partner after a job when the redhead was limping back while _he_ sauntered along with little more than holes in his clothing. But such was life. He wasn't exactly happy with his condition either.

He didn't know how many times he'd wished he was dead, how many times he'd wished one of the dozens of bullets that had hit him had managed to end his miserable life. He hated to fill the 'emo' stereotype that his appearance seemed to portray to people, but shit just got...tiring. He wasn't making any fucking progress and, some days, it felt like he never would. Giovanni just kept coming, and nothing he did ever seemed to stop the bastard. Or those twins for that matter. And with these soldiers coming up and destroying the city...It all seemed to point to the fact that he didn't have what was needed to be able to actually get to any of them.

But pointing a gun at his own head, staring at his own tired eyes in the mirror and waiting for his cold finger to pull the trigger, for his own bullet to spray his brains across his dirty bathroom floor...never seemed to work. Going out like that just seemed...anticlimactic. It seemed pitiful. Hell, if he shot himself in the head, Badou would probably mock his dead body. And kick it. And knowing his luck, he'd still be able to hear the smoker long after he was dead...So he had to try and think of something else.

And that's where the problems came in. As far as he knew, only a shot to his head could kill him. Well...anything that severed that metal collar from the rest of him. Which meant getting his spine out in some way. At the same time, though, there were dozens of other ways that could kill a regular person that he had to figure would kill him too.

He knew well enough, he supposed, that tearing limbs off didn't work. He'd been forced to learn that in his 'training' with the other 'kids' down below. They could regenerate that much. But what about organs? What if he let someone rip his chest open and tear his heart from his chest? What if let someone just outright gut him, throw everything in a meat grinder, and leave his empty shell of a body on a floor like a rug? Would _that _kill him? Or would he get up after a few hours with a brand new set of _everything_? ...Probably that one, yeah.

So then what about decapitation? What if he just let someone lop off his head and kick it a few hundred yards away from his body like an empty tin can? He couldn't grow a whole new _body, _could he? Or would his body try and grow a new head? And if it did, what would he do with the old one? No...Heine somehow doubted anything would be able to cut through the metal his spine was made up of. It was probably designed so that decapitation wasn't even an option...

Any kind of removal seemed impossible. Or ineffective. Which ruled out getting cut in half at the waist, though he had to admit it would be an interesting thing to see. But then...what if he tried simply bleeding himself? Like all of those pitifully cliché teenagers who laid in the tub, slit their wrists, and waited to die? Obviously that route wouldn't work – his body would just heal the damage to his wrists – but what if he were to split a major artery or two and just made sure he kept them open? Other than making a mess, though, Heine couldn't see it working. The blood loss would probably just make him dizzy, he'd pass out, and without his actively keeping the cuts open, they'd heal up and he'd probably be back on his feet in a few hours.

Fuck. No matter how many times he went over these, no matter how much time he put towards thinking up ways that _should _have been able to kill him, he always came up short. But then he sometimes _over _thought things. Maybe he needed to go simpler...

Hanging wouldn't work; he knew that already. As much as he died for however long he was left swinging there, as soon as he got at some oxygen, his body was up and running again. And he didn't have the money to invest in a rope that wouldn't break over time. Or an apartment where people _don't_ stumble in thinking it's theirs, finding his body, and reporting it.

But what about an explosion? A nice big one that shook the city and let everyone know that he was going out. That would _have _to do the trick, wouldn't it? It would scatter him into tiny little pieces. It'd smear him over the whole fucking block, the whole underground if he picked the right explosives. And yet...with his streak of luck, the damn spine would probably survive with some scrap of his brain material on it and he'd wake up days later, hurting all over, but alive. And everyone would call him a fucking zombie. No thanks.

Really, Heine was just kidding himself when he tried to convince himself that he might be able to die in a flashier way than a shot to the head. And he knew he was. It wasn't that he'd gone out and tried anything – well, he hadn't tried _most _of them at least – and he was finding it wasn't really worth the effort. A lot of them required a lot of money or his giving up to an enemy, and he didn't have enough cash and too much pride to manage either.

So he resigned himself to living, resigned himself to coughing up bad bullets and scaring lowlifes when their weapons didn't fell him. He resigned himself to listening to Badou's bitching about how unfair it all was, resigned himself to a fate of endless battles with people who shared the same burden as him. Or gift. It really depended on the team one was on.

Perhaps his resignation – as much as it had him fighting to live and not just standing by waiting to die – was what lead to a situation he _hadn't _considered. Perhaps it was because he'd figured nothing could touch him that he'd found himself possibly facing the end. And it made him laugh.

Even as his partner cussed him out for it while trying to dig him out, even as the taste of his own blood filled his mouth and the smell of gunpowder and explosives filled his nose, it was funny. How could he have missed this one? Maybe it was the circumstances...Yeah. That had to be it.

Not once in his many speculations had he ever thought he'd end up crushed under the rubble of a cheap warehouse because he'd put Badou's life before his own. He'd never given himself that much credit; noble deaths seemed so...overrated.


End file.
